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NEGRO SLAVERY 



OR 



CRIME OF THE CLERGY 



PASQUALE RUSSO 




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NEGRO SLAVERY 



OR 



CRIME OF THE CLERGY 



A TREATISE ON CHATTEL AND WAGE 
SLAVERY, PRESENTING A BRIEF HIS- 
TORICAL DISCUSSION OF THE NEGRO 
PROBLEM IN AMERICA. 



BY 
PASQUALE RUSSO 



1923 

PUBLISHED BY 

MODERN SCHOOL OF PEDAGOGY 

833 Sedgwick Street 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 






Copyrighted by 

PASQUALE RUSSO 

1923 

All rights reserved 



WW 28 '23 



C1A703242 



PREFACE. 

The following monograph is written for and dedicated to 
the lovers of freedom; to those who are on the firing line in 
the struggle between the classes and those who are fight- 
ing dogmatic theology, industrial oppression and political 
tyranny. 

Particularly we address ourselves to the colored people of 
the United States on account of their brilliant and heroic 
struggle against capitalistic autocracy. It is hoped that this 
story will inspire a better understanding among the negroes 
and lead them to join their white fellow workers in the strug- 
gle against the exploiting capitalist class and their agents, the 
clergy. 

It is the duty of every colored man and woman to be in- 
formed on this question and to make use of their reason- 
ing faculties. Only in this way can they avoid being unduly 
influenced by corrupt politicians, lawyers and insincere 
clergymen, most of whom presume to do the thinking for the 
colored population. 

That the labor of the negro is exploited by a well 
organized system is now quite obvious and the method by 
which it is accomplished amounts in substance to robbery. 

In past ages there have been other systems such as serf- 
dom and chattel slavery and it is now generally agreed that 
both were barbaric and inhuman. We have now come to 
know that the capitalist system of exploitation is in the 
same category. And it is evident that relief is only to be 
had by getting in touch with accurate sources of information ; 
by intensified working-class education and solidified economic 
organization. 

At present, one of the chief obstacles to the attainment of 
freedom from wage-slavery is the clergy. In all ages it has 
been an enemy of the workers and under the present capital- 
istic regime merely appear in a different guise. In all the 
struggles of the past the priest has identified himself with the 
ruling classes and has pretended friendship for the ruled class. 
During the movement for the abolition of negro slavery in the 
United States the clergymen demonstrated beyond the perad- 



venture of a doubt that tbey not only were the beneficiaries of 
negro exploitation but upheld it as the divinely ordained insti- 
tution. These facts are set forth in this book/ 

To all this we are quite well aware the clergy will raise a 
storm of protest and condemn the book outright. However, 
the facts speak for themselves, the road is clear, our work 
is conscientious, and we have done our duty as best we 
knew how. 

In this work we are indebted to many predecessors 
and some contemporaries. For our sources of information we 
are grateful to Gustave Herve, Herman Schulter, Eugene V. 
Debs, Scott Nearing, Gustavus Myers, George R. Kirkpatrick, 
Oscar Ameringer, Parker Pillsbury, William Lloyd Garrison, 
Wendell Phillips, Robert G. Ingersoll, Claude McKay, Win- 
rood Reade and many others. 

Also appreciative thanks are expressed to Professor 
Samuel W. Ball, instructor in the Central School of 
Psychology, Chicago, for editing, revising and compiling 
our work. It was through him that our work was brought 
to completion at so early a date. 

If this work brings home vividly to the reader the 
necessity for the solution of the problem which it presents 
it will well serve its purpose. This little book is as sincere 
as the author could make it and it will be enduring for that 
reason. 

— Pasquale Russo. 



Chicago, Illinois. 
March 1, 1923. 



SLAVERY. 

By Percy Bysshe Shelley 



What is freedom? Ye can tell 
That which Slavery is too well, 
For its very name has grown 
To an echo of your own. 
'Tis to work and have such pay 
As just keeps life from day to day 
In your limbs as in a cell 
For the tyrants' use to dwell, 
So that ye for them are made 
Loom and plough and sword and spade. 
With or without your own will, bent 
To their defense and nourishment. 
'Tis to see your children weak 
With their mothers pine and peak 
When the winter winds are bleak— 
They are dying whilst I speak. 
'Tis to hunger for such diet 
As the rich man in his riot 
Casts to the fat dogs that lie 
Surfeiting beneath his eye. 
'Tis to be a slave in soul, 
And to hold no strong control 
Over your own wills, but be 
All that others make of ye; 
And, at length when ye complain 
With a murmur weak and vain, 
'Tis to see the tyrant's crew 
Ride over your wives and you — 
5 



Blood is on the grass like dew! 
Then it is to feel revenge, 
Fiercely thirsting to exchange 
Blood for blood, and wrong for wrong; 
Do not thus when ye are strong! 
Birds find rest in narrow nest, 
When weary of their winged quest; 
Beasts find fare in woody lair 
When storms and snow are in the air; 
Horses, oxen, have a home 
When from daily toil they come; 
Household dogs, when the wind roars, 
Find a home within warm doors; 
Asses, swine, have litter spread 
And with fitting food are fed; 
All things have a home but one : 
Thou, O Englishman, hast none ! 
This is Slavery! — savage men, 
Or wild beasts within a den, 
Would endure not as ye do; 
But such ills they never knew. 
Rise, like lions after slumber, 
In unvanquishable number! 
Shake your chains to earth, like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you ! 
Ye are many, they are few. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The negro race has a history of its own. The weird 
romanticism of the Ethiopian in his native African habitat, 
in itself makes a most fascinating subject for investigation 
and research. It is not, however, with the traditions, cus- 
toms and institutions of the negro in his native land that we 
are most concerned; but rather with the more grewsome 
and tragic phases of his strange and sad story, the mosj; 
pitiful pages of which deal with the enslavement of almost 
an entire people and their struggles toward civic and 
economic freedom. The emancipation of the slaves in America 
staged the first victory of their struggle for liberty from the 
enslavement forced upon them by the good Christian pluto- 
crats of America and other so-called civilized countries. 

The chapter that 'deals with negro slavery constitutes one 
of the darkest stains on the record of United States history. 
To be born with brown skin has always been held an un- 
forgivable crime by other races, especially by the Caucasian 
whites. This concept sprang from the arrogance of the 
aristocratic Indo-European world, from the bigotry of the 
churchmen and the ignorance of the masses. 

Robert G. Ingersoll said in his address to the colored 
people at Galesburg, Illinois, 1887: "Slavery has in a 
thousand forms existed in all ages and among all people. 
It is as old as theft or robbery. Every nation has enslaved 
its own people, and sold its own flesh and blood. Most of 
the white race are in slavery today. It has often been said 
that any man who ought to be free will be. The men who 
say this should remember that their own ancestors were 
once cringing, frightened, helpless slaves. When they be- 
came sufficiently educated to cease enslaving their own 
people, they then enslaved the first race they could conquer. 
If they differed in religion, they enslaved them. If they 
differed in color that was sufficient. If they differed even in 
language, it was enough. If they were captured, they then 
pretended that having spared their lives, they had the right 
to enslave them. This argument was worthless. If they 
were captured, then there was no necessity for killing them. 
If there was no necessity for killing them, then they had no 



right to kill them. If they had no right to kill them, then 
they had no right to enslave them under the pretense that 
they had saved their lives. Every excuse that the ingenuity 
of avarice could devise was believed to be a complete justifi- 
cation, and the great argument of slave-holders in all coun- 
tries has been that slavery is a divine institution, and thus 
stealing human beings has always been justified with a 'Thus 
Faith the Lord'. Slavery has always been upheld by law and 
religion in every country." 

It is well known that the church, like Aristotle, held 
slavery to be necessary and natural, and, under just con- 
ditions, beneficial to both parties in the relation. It was 
clearly to the interest of the church and state to preserve 
slavery indefinitely, which has always been a legal status of 
oppression employed by the master class to keep in sub- 
jection the workers of every country. 

In India, China and Africa slavery existed for many 
centuries. Among Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, 
Hebrews, Persians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans, slavery 
was the foundation of society. Religion always was the ally 
of the aristocratic class in upholding slavery as a holy insti- 
tution. Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianism, Moham- 
medanism — all these religions have sanctioned slavery. The 
slave was the property of the master and had no civil right to 
freedom. He was voiceless and powerless. 

Speaking of the slaves, Thomas Jefferson said : "When 
the measure of their tears shall be full — when their groans 
shall have involved heaven itself in darkness — doubtless a 
God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing 
light and liberality among their oppressors or at least by his 
exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to things of 
this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of 
blind fatality." 



NEGRO SLAVERY 

OR 

CRIME OF THE CLERGY 



SLAVE COAST. 

The old slave coast, part of Upper Guinea and West 
Africa, extending from the River Volta to the Niger Delta, 
is now included in the spheres of influence of Great Britain 
and France. From the beginning of the 16th to the end of 
the 18th century this region was the principal resort of the 
Europeans engaged in the slave trade. As Africa had been 
noted chiefly through the trading posts which bartered for 
"White Ivory", the new traffic in negro slaves soon become 
popularly known as trade in "Black Ivory". 

"The original inhabitants of Africa were the Hottentots, 
or Bushmen, a dwarfish race who have restless, rambling, 
ape-like eyes, a click in their speech, and bodies which are 
the wonder of anatomists. They are now found only on the 
South African platform, or perhaps here and there on the 
platform of the Congo. They have been driven southward 
by the negroes, as the Esquimaux in America were driven 
north by the Red Indians, and the Finns in Europe by the 
Celtic tribes, while the negroes themselves have yielded in 
some parts of Africa to Asiatic tribes, as the Celts in Gaul 
and Britain yielded to the Germans." (Martyrdom of Man", 
Winwood Reade, p. 276). 

Politically the slave coast was before 1914 divided be- 
tween Germany, France, and the Queen of the Sea, Great 
Britain. At the end of the Great World War the German 
section of Tagoland fell into the hands of English imperialists, 
and so once more, the tail of the perfidious lion was safe in the 
Lagos section of Nigeria. 

GENESIS OF NEGRO SLAVE TRAFFIC. 

After the disappearance of serfdom in most "Christian 
countries", the same monster, under different cloth, came 
with the barbarous system of slavery, adding one more 
plague on the body of humanity. 

9 



The first people to venture down the west coast of Africa 
and around the continent were Portuguese navigators who 
discovered the slave coast of Africa from which most of the 
negroes came. 

The Navigator, Prince Henry, with a crew of Portuguese, 
in the year 1442, started exploring the Atlantic coast of 
Africa. 

"He was not only a brave knight (?) but also a dis- 
tinguished scholar; his mind had been enriched by study of 
the works of Cicero, Seneca and Pliny, and by the latin 
translation of the Greek geographers. He now stepped on 
that mysterious continent which had been closed to Christians 
for several hundred years. He questioned some prisoners 
respecting the interior. They described the rich and learned 
cities of Morocco, the Atlas mountains, shining with snow; 
and the sandy desert on their southern side. It was there 
that the ancients had supposed all life came to an end. But 
now the Prince received the astounding intelligence that be- 
yond the Sahara was a land inhabited entirely by negroes; 
covered with fields of corn and cotton, watered by majestic 
rivers, on the banks of which rose cities as large as Morocco, 
or Lisbon, or Seville. In that country were gold mines of 
prodigious wealth; it was also a granary of slaves. By land 
it could be reached in a week from Morocco by a courier 
mounted on a swift dromedary of the desert, which halted 
not by day or night. 

"There were regular caravans or camel-fleet, which passed 
to and fro at certain seasons of the year. The Black Coun- 
try, as they called it, could also be reached by sea if ships 
sailed along the desert shore toward the south they would 
arrive at the mouths of wide rivers, which flowed down 
from the gold-bearing hills." ("Martyrdom of Man", Win- 
wood Reade, p. 328-9). 

Prince Henry had an able officer, Senior Antam Gonsalves 
who captured many Moors and held them in hostage at the 
command of the Prince. The prisoners captured offered a 
ransom of several negroes for their release. The offer was 
accepted by Prince Henry and as soon as the Moors were 
freed, in gratitude for their freedom they offered to the 
Prince gold dust and precious stones. This was the in- 
centive for the Portuguese to build many ships for the 
slave traffic and fortified their positions along the African 
coast. 

10 



Scott Nearing, speaking of the slave coast says: "The 
trade in gold and ivory, which sprang up as a result of those 
early explorations, led other nations of Europe to enter 
into eager competition with the Portuguese. Thus the com- 
mercial interests of the French, German, Danish and 
English were eventually brought into sharp conflict with 
those of the Portuguese." 

Portugal for some time supplied Spain with negroes and in 
a very short time Spain had plenty of slaves. Haiti in 1505 
had thousands of negro slaves under the iron rule of the Span- 
ish governor, Nicolas de Ovando. These negroes did excellent 
work in the mines, and could bear the labor better than the 
Indians. 

King Charles in 1516, while in Flanders, granted license 
to his courtiers for the importation of negroes into the 
colonies and gave the Flemish the right of supplying 4000 
negroes annually to Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica and Porto Rico. The 
Flemish merchants later sold that patent for 25,000 ducats to 
the Genoese. The enormous Genoese, English and Portuguese 
success, in the slave-trade, stirred Spain to the foolish ambi- 
tion of conquering a portion of the slave coast, but Spain was 
prevented from taking possession of the African coast, by 
Pope Alexander VI, who gave an order forbidding Spain to 
acquire territory east of the meridian line of 100 miles west 
of the Azores. To have the privilege of doing business in 
Africa it was necessary to have the sanction of the holy 
father. 

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

The Western Hemisphere was the great problem con- 
fronted by European pirates for many centuries before the 
discovery of the New World. 

The cause that led Columbus to the discovery of America 
lies in the commercial interest of the imperialistic class of 
Spain. 

The era of slavery and robbery began on the Amer- 
ican continent with the landing of Columbus, who ventured 
to follow in the footsteps of Marco Polo for the lure of gold 
and not for the love of mankind. Columbus was a brutal 
and cruel man. Events that followed the landing of Colum- 
bus confirm this statement. In his memorial of the second 
voyage to the Indies, January 30, 1494, he wrote to King 
Ferdinand: "Cattle, provision and other articles can be sold 

11 



at moderate prices and paid with slaves, taken among the 
Caribbees who are a wild people fit for any work, who will 
be better than any other kind of slaves." The King gladly 
accepted the advice and commencing in 1509, he forced more 
than 40,000 slaves in the mines of Cuba to work for the 
interests of the aristocratic class of Spain. 

The discovery of America was the era of a new form of 
oppression, "Colonial Slavery." 

Negro slaves, by the year 1626 were already brought 
back and sold in New York. Thus it is seen that slavery 
and the slave trade in the United States dates from the 
earliest colonial times. 

THE ENGLISH SLAVE TRADE. 

The tragic chapter of Spanish slavery is as nothing in 
comparison with the one dealing with the English slave 
trade. 

Sir John Hawkins, an Englishman, was the first rascal 
to engage in the slave trade. His aim at the beginning was 
to supply Spanish settlements with slaves until a new road 
was opened to him. An English ship in 1620, visited James- 
town, Virginia, selling a cargo of slaves to the tobacco- 
planters. 

For many years the African trade of England was in the 
hands of exclusive companies. The "Company of Royal 
Adventurers, Trading in Africa" was chartered by the 
Christian King (?) Charles II, in the year 1662. This was 
the devout Charles II who claimed his throne by the grace of 
God, Defender of the Faith by Divine Right. His Royal 
Majesty inspired more by a desire to share the moral re- 
sponsibility than the profit of the nefarious enterprise, ac- 
cepted as partners in his slave traffic the Dowager Queen 
and the Duke of York. 

This company supplied the East Indies with more than 
three thousand slaves each year. But somehow the venture 
failed to show adequate returns and in 1672 the company 
sold its charter to the "Royal African Company" organized 
for the same worthy purpose, by the same divinely inspired 
King. This company supplied the Spanish colonies with 
4800 negroes annually. The African Company continued to 
exist however, and obtained from time to time parlia- 
mentary grants by the Treaty of Utrecht. 

12 



In 1692, the British parliament, ignoring the King's 
divine right to rule, gave English merchants the right to trade 
in African slaves, provided they paid a small tax. The hunting 
of human beings, to make them slaves, was urgently demanded 
by the European colonies. 

The English slave trade was then carried on principally 
from Liverpool, London, Bristol and Lancaster. The num- 
ber of ships sailing from those ports was 192, and in them 
space was provided for the transport of 47,145 negroes. 
After the slaves left the dark African continent, during the 
passage to the West Indies, twelve per cent died at Jamaica, 
four and a half per cent died while in the harbors. 

According to statistics, out of every lot of a hundred 
slaves shipped from Africa, seventeen died in about nine 
weeks and not more than fifty per cent lived to be effective 
laborers in the island. The circumstances and the miserable 
life on the plantation did not serve to increase their number. 

In Jamaica, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
there were in 1690, 40,000 slaves; from that year till 1820, 
there were imported 800,000 slaves; yet at the latter date 
there were only 340,000 of them left in the island. One thing 
which prevented the natural increase of population was the 
inequality in the number of the sexes ; in Jamaica alone there 
was an excess of 30,000 males. 

NEGRO CIVILIZATION. 

The negroes who inhabited the Slave Coast from Cape 
Verde on the north to St. Martha on the south were of 
varying standards of life and temperament. 

U. B. Phillips says, in his American Negro Slavery, 
(p. 48, 1906 edition) : "The Wyndahs, Nagoes and Paw- 
paws of the Slave Coast were generally the most highly 
esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful 
and submissive." 

Historians record that some of them were fierce and war- 
like, while others were docile and amenable to discipline. 
The more spirited and aggressive made indifferent slaves; 
the docile and subservient were eagerly sought out and sold 
in the slave market. 

When European buccaneers began to exploit the natives 
as human chattel, the inhabitants of the slave coast had 
made wonderful progress in culture and industry. In the 

13 



preslavery days they built houses of mud and stones; they 
made ornaments of artistic value and they wove cloth. 

Along the west coast of Africa the native culture, while 
not highly advanced, was a culture which had taken root 
and made definite progress within the knowledge of man. 
It was a culture in which had developed language, arts, 
commerce, tribal unity and communal organization. 

This native progress received a mortal blow, in the 17th, 
18th and 19th centuries by the insatiable demand from 
European and American traders for black slaves. 

The object of dealing in "Black Ivory" was to insure a 
maximum of labor from the unfortunate victim at a minimum 
cost. Ethiopian families were ruthlessly broken up, lives 
hopelessly wrecked and the negroes' economic power of pro- 
ductivity exploited to the uttermost. The severest brutalities 
were inflicted upon those who had the hardihood and the man- 
hood to express by word or deed, their natural resentment and 
dissatisfaction with their unenviable lot. And what if a zeal- 
ous overseer or master beat to death an ungrateful, rebellious 
or runaway slave who had risked his all to wrest freedom from 
his brutal, inhuman, merciless appressors? Was the dead 
slave not his master's chattel? Who that dared to criticize 
the master's disposition of his property — "Industry ! Submiss- 
iveness!" No wonder these qualities were so especially valued 
by the slave traders. 



TRAPPING AND PROCURING OF SLAVES. 

Scott Nearing, concerning the trapping of slaves, said: 
"When the Portuguese explored the slave coast there was 
comparatively little slavery among the natives. Some cap- 
tives taken in war ; some debtors, unable to meet their obliga- 
tions and some violators of religious tribal rites, were held by 
the chief or headman of the tribe. On occasion this barbarous 
tyrant would sell his slaves, but the slave trade cannot be said 
to have been really established until the white man organized 
it." With a few minor exceptions the whites themselves did 
not engage directly in slave catching. This was far too dan- 
gerous a business. In most instances slave brokers who estab- 
lished themselves on the coast, supplied the needs of the 
European and American traders. These vile traffickers and 
exploiters of their brother negroes, in turn, were supplied 

14 



with slaves from the interior. Most of these were captured 
during native wars by professional raiding parties, well sup- 
plied with European arms and ammunition. 

"At first the European kidnapped the negroes whom 
they met on the beach, or who came off the ships' in their 
canoes; but the "treacherous natives" made reprisals; the 
practice was, therefore, given up, and the trade was con- 
ducted upon an equitable principle. It was found that hon- 
esty is the best policy, and that it was cheaper to buy men 
than to steal them." ("Martyrdom of Man," Winwood Reade, 
p. 348.) 

The trapping and shipping of negroes off the coast of 
Africa developed gradually into an important industry. 
The total number of slaves carried away from Africa during 
the period when the slave trade flourished is difficult to 
estimate. Authorities differ somewhat upon the matter. 

Between 1650 and 1700, 140,000 negroes were exported 
by the African Companjr and 160,000 by pirate enterprisers. 
Between 1700 and 1786 as many as 610,000 were transported 
to Jamaica alone, which had been an English possession 
since 1655. Claridge states that the Guinea Coast as a 
whole supplied from 70,000 to 100,000 slaves yearly, about 
the year 1700. Bryan Edward estimates the total import 
of slaves into all the British oclonies of America and the In- 
dies from 1680 to 1786 at 2,130,000. W. W. Claridge records 
a shipment of 47,000 slaves carried off by the British ships 
alone in 1771, and gives the total number of slaves shipped 
from the African coast, in the year 1768, as approximately 
97,000. The British slave trade reached its utmost extension 
shortly before the war for American Independence. 

The negro inhabitant of the slave coast was practically 
compelled to choose between being a traitor (slave catcher) 
against his fellowmen or an enemy of the white slave 
traders. As a slave catcher he was considered among the 
white merchants as a respectable black man because he 
spread terror and destruction among his inoffensive fellow 
Ethiopians whom he seized and sold to the enemy of his race, 
the white exploiters, of his subjugated people. In case 
of solidarity to his class he was doomed to take a long jour- 
ney across the Atlantic, to a strange, wild, new, unexplored 
and unknown land, and condemned to perpetual slavery. 

In defence of these poor human beings, Thomas Paine 
said : "These inoffensive people, which are brought into 

15 



slavery, by stealing them, tempting kings to sell subjects, 
which they have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war 
against one another to catch prisoners, but such wicked and 
inhuman ways are left by heathen to be practiced by Chris- 
tians." 

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 

The first cause of the Revolutionary War was the inter- 
ference of the ruling class of England with the profits of 
the smugglers and land speculators of this country. 

"It was a quarrel between two divisions of the ruling 
class separated by a vast expanse of water and each envy- 
ing the opportunities of the other. Commerce, ship-build- 
ing, industry and agriculture had developed to such an 
extent at the dawn of the Revolution that acts of Parliament 
became a serious menace to the income of the colonial mas- 
ter." ("Workers in American History," James Oneal, p. 
105.) 

A. M. Simmons in "Class Struggle in America" says: 
"By the beginning of the 18th century, the English were 
attempting to enforce the laws against smuggling. At the 
same time they passed laws forbidding the growth of man- 
ufacturing in the colonies. Yet on the whole this attempt 
at enforcement was not successful enough to be anything more 
than an annoyance to the shrewd smugglers of New Eng- 
land. This made it possible for the East India Company, 
a semi-governmental institution, in which the king and most 
of the court favorites were interested, to deliver tea in 
Boston Harbor, tariff and all, cheaper than the American 
smugglers could sell. This abolished the profit and when 
the profit was eliminated, smuggling was most effectually 
prohibited." Then it was that the oppressed smugglers roused 
and held the Boston Tea Party. 

The second cause of the Revolutionary War we may 
trace to the intrigues of George Washington. Before the 
Revolutionary War no working class interest was at stake 
and when the conflict arose we must blame the treachery 
of the Father of Our Country, George Washington. 

In 1749 the Ohio Company was organized and George 
Washington was made President. King George gave the Ohio 
Company 500,000 acres of land for speculation. The good old 

16 



"Father of Our Country" was not satisfied, and, without any 
permission he surveyed more land. According to Simons, 
"Washington had good reasons for being a rebel, as he had 
surveyed land outside the royal grant and in exceeding the 
power of his commission was liable to prosecution as a law 
breaker." With him was associated another good patriot, 
John Hancock (King of Smugglers), who signed the Declara- 
tion of Independence. Hancock was accused of having robbed 
the English Government of $500,000 import duties. This was 
another reason why Hancock fought English imperialism. 
So. it is quite evident that the Revolutionary War was fought 
to save the robbers' faces. 

"Fortunately, evidence exists in abundance to show that 
it was a revolt of the aristocracy, fought by the workers 
under the delusion that the grandiloquent phrases of the 
Declaration of Independence implied greater opportunities 
and liberties for the long suffering laborers." ("The Work- 
ers in American History," James Oneal, p. 10 i.) 

There is a general impression that Washington was a 
good man. No one can deny that he was good for himself, 
like any other despot. He was the friend of the ruling class 
and the enemy of the working class. Never during his ad- 
ministration did he utter a word against slavery. 

Jefferson, at the First Continental Congress, proposed 
an ordinance (March 1st, 1784) for the government of the 
North West Territory, in which there was a proviso that 
after the year 1800 "There shall be no slavery nor involun- 
tary servitude." This proviso was defeated by the chicanery 
of astute politicians. At the Convention of Philadelphia in 
1787, where the Constitution was drafted, the framers, to 
save the Union, left out the abolition of slavery, as a part of 
the text. To fool the people they inserted a paragraph 
which read: "All men are born free and equal, with equal 
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 

The South wanted more slaves and at any cost they stood 
against the abolition of slavery. "Upon this question Vir- 
ginia appears to have been divided. But Georgia and the 
Carolinas at once declared that they would not have the 
slave trade abolished; they wanted more slaves; and unless 
this species of property was guaranteed, they would not 
enter the Union at all. They demanded that slavery should 
be recognized and protected by the Constitution. The North- 
erners gave in at once; they only requested that the words 

17 



'slave' and 'slavery' might not appear. To this the Southerners 
agreed, and the contract was delicately worded, but it was 
none the less stringent. It was made a clause of the Con- 
stitution that if the slaves of any state rebelled, the national 
troops should be employed against them. It was made a 
clause of the Constitution that if a slave escaped to a free 
state, the authorities of that state should be obliged to give 
him up. And lastly, slave owners were allowed to have 
votes in proportion to the number of their slaves. Such was 
the price which the Northerners were to pay for nationality, 
a price which their descendants found a hard and heavy one 
to pay. The Fathers of the Country ate sour grapes, and 
the children's teeth were set on edge." ("Martyrdom of Man," 
Winwood Reade, p. 375). 

The Constitution is supposed to be the cornerstone of 
American freedom but, in fact, little freedom was given to 
the workers. 

The reason the masters of 1776 refused to abolish slavery 
lay in the danger or possibility of the rise of labor to power. 
When the United States Constitution was written Adam 
Smith spoke in plain language, "Civil government, so far as 
it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality 
instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of 
those who have some property against those who have none 
at all." 

The Constitution was framed by the ruling class for their 
own benefit. Senator R. F. PettigreW in his immortal book 
"Imperial Washington" states in Chapter XIII, page 163: 
"The Convention of 1787 that framed the Constitution of 
the United States was dominated by lawyers, money-lenders 
and land owners. It did its work behind closed doors, all 
members being sworn not to disclose any of the proceedings. 

"Madison reported the proceedings in long-hand; his 
notes were purchased by Congress and published in 1837, 
nearly half a century after the convention had finished its 
work. These published notes disclose the forces that domi- 
nated the work of the convention. All through the debates 
ran one theme: how to secure a government, not by the 
people for the people, but by the classes for the classes, with 
the lawyers in control. This was the burden of the debates, 
page after page, through all of the seven hundred sixty pages 
of the two volumes of Madison Notes. 



18 



"The Constitution thus framed did not create a govern- 
ment of the people; its whole purpose was to promote and 
protect the rights of property more than the right of man." 

THE ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT. 

From the formation of the Northern States, beginning in 
1777 and ending in 1804, the slave trade increased its influ- 
ence in the Union. 

The slave traffic increased from 40,000 a year in 1820 to 
200,000 in 1857. With the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, 
the annexation of Texas (1845) and the Fugitive Slave 
Law (1850) freedom was dead in America and the menace 
of slavery was increasing day after day. 

Slavery- and freedom could not abide together. The Fugi- 
tive Slave Law was disliked by the North and caused great 
trouble. This was a tyrannical and a monstrous law. A 
negro as a runaway slave had no right to a trial by jury and 
was without chance of escape. This law created intense and 
bitter feeling between the North and the South. It helped 
to intensify hatred and brought before the eyes of the 
people the odious aspect of the whole barbarous system 
of slavery. The people themselves began to stir and to 
combat this tyranny. The abolitionist movement was or- 
ganized. The task was difficult but not hopeless. Many 
brave men sacrificed their lives for the freedom of the 
negro race. 

In 1821 William Goodell and Benjamin Lundy began an 
antislavery press with the publication of two papers, "The 
Genius of Universal Emancipation" and "The Investigator." 
Then followed "Genius of Temperance" in 1830 and the 
"Emancipator" in 1833. William Lloyd Garrison, in 1831, 
supported by Arthur and Lewis Tapper established the "Lib- 
erator" in Boston. As soon as Garrison commenced the pub- 
lication of the "Liberator" he received the honor of having 
a price set on his head by the Government of Georgia. Gar- 
rison condemned slavery as a crime and demanded uncondi- 
tional abolition. He was a powerful and polished orator and 
hated slavery with a profound hatred. His writing was be- 
yond question sharp and severe. In the first issue of the 
"Liberator," January 1st, 1831, he wrote: "No Union with 
murders and no rule by assassins. Liberty for each, for all, 
and forever. 

19 



"No person will rule over me with my consent. I will 
rule over no man. Enslave the liberty of but one human 
being and the liberties of the world are put in peril. When 
I look at these crowded thousands, and see them trample on 
their consciences and the rights of their fellowmen at the 
bidding of a piece of parchment, I say, my curse be on the 
Constitution of the United States. Why, sir, no freedom of 
speech or inquiry is conceded to me in this land. Am I not 
vehemently told both in the North and South that I have no 
right to meddle with the question of slavery? And my right 
to speak on any other subject, in opposition to public opin- 
ion, is equally denied me. I am aware that many object to the 
severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? 
I will be as harsh as Truth, and as uncompromising as Jus- 
tice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or 
write with moderation. No! No!! Tell a man whose house 
is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately 
rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the 
mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into 
which it has fallen — but urge me not to use moderation in a 
cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivo- 
cate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — I 
will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make 
every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resur- 
rection of the dead." 

Garrison would make no compromise. He denounced the 
Government and the Church, with the motto: "Truth shall 
make us free'". Garrison fought a just cause and to the 
shame of Boston he was mobbed in that city. The abolition- 
ist movement gained ground after 1830. John Rankin 
formed an abolitionist society in Kentucky. The New Eng- 
gland Antislavery Society and one in New York City were 
formed in 1832 and the American Antislavery Society re- 
sulted from the convention of the National Antislavery 
Society at Philadelphia in 1833. 

The pioneers of the abolitionist movement in America 
were: W. Goodell, Benjamin Lundy, Charles Sumner, Hutch- 
inson, James G. Birney, Stephen Foster, Parker Pillsbury, 
Nathaniel Peabody Roger (Editor of the Herald of Free- 
dom), Nathaniel Allen, Erastus Brown, Attorney Carleton, 
Frederick Douglass, Thomas P. Beach, Jesse P. Harriman, 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
Horace Greeley (Editor New York Tribune), Henry Ward 

20 



Beecher, Lydia Maria Child, Susan B. Anthony. Among the 
poets and literary folk we find these names prominent in the 
abolitionist movement : W. H. Channing, Ralph Waldo Em- 
erson, Henry D. Thoreau, T. W. Whitley; Lowell, Bryant, 
Longfellow, Whittier and Whitman. 

The beginning of the abolitionist movement was marked 
by atrocities. The agitators would not compromise with the 
ruling class. Again, to the shame of Boston, Wendell Phil- 
lips, like William Lloyd Garrison, was mobbed in the same 
city and Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob 
in Alton, Illinois. 

Abolitionists were flogged and killed by ministers of the 
gospel; their meetings were frequently interrupted; mayors 
refused them permission to speak in the streets and preach- 
ers denied them the privilege of the churches. 

The church did everything to help the cause of the slave- 
owners, and was very aggressive in its fight against the 
abolitionist movement. 

The proof of this is contained in the following evidence 
culled from many historical sources: 

From the "Herald of Freedom" by Stephen S. Foster, 
January 15, 1842. "When I dare look on my shattered form, 
I sometimes think prisons will be needed for me but little 
longer. Within the last fifteen months four times they have 
opened their small cells for my reception. Twenty-four times 
have my countrymen dragged me from their temples of 
worship, and twice they have thrown me with great violence 
from the second story of their buildings, careless of con- 
sequences. Once in a Baptist meeting house they gave me 
an evangelical kick in the side, which left me for weeks an in- 
valid. Times out of memory have they broken up my meet- 
ings with violence, and hunted me with brick-bats and bad 
eggs. Once in the name of outraged law and justice have 
they attempted to put me in irons ; twice have they punished 
me with fine for preaching the gospel ; once in a mob of two 
thousand people have they deliberately attempted to murder 
me, and were foiled in their designs only after inflicting 
some twenty blows on my head, face and neck, by the 
heroism of a brave and noble woman." 

During the trying days of Lincoln's administration the 
clergy of the South met in Atlanta, Georgia, and passed 
strong resolutions endorsing slavery. In reply to them 
Abraham Lincoln said: "Slavery will not be abolished till 

21 



the last ecclesiastical law is repealed. The southern clergy 
issued several publications among them two: The Bible De- 
fense of Slavery and the Scriptural View in Favor of 
Slavery." 

Bishop Hedding declared that the anti-slavery agitation 
was in direct antagonism to the Lord, and further held: 
"The right to hold slaves is founded on this rule — 'All things 
whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye 
even so unto them/ " Bishop Hedding might have quoted 
from the same Bible where it says: "Cursed be Canaan; a 
servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." (Genesis 
ix, 25) . "Of the children of the strangers that sojourn among 
you, of them shall ye buy. They shall be your bondmen 
forever; but over your brethren, the Children Of Israel, ye 
shall not rule over one another with rigor." (Leviticus xxv, 
45,46). "I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands 
of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the 
Sabeans, to a people afar off, the Lord hath spoken it." 
(Joel iii, 8). 

Reverend R. N. Anderson, of Virginia, wrote to the 
sessions of the Presbyterian Congregation within the bounds 
of the West Hanover Presbiter: "If there be any stray goat 
of a minister among you, tainted with the blood-hound 
principles of abolitionism, let him be ferreted out, silenced, 
excommunicated and left to the public to dispose of him in 
other respects." 

Reverend T. S. Witherspoon, of Alabama, wrote to the 
"Emancipator": "When the tardy process of the law is too 
long in redressing our grievances, we of the South have 
adopted the summary remedy of Judge Lynch; and really, 
1 think it is one of the most wholesome and salutary remedies 
for the malady of Northern fanaticism that can be applied. 
I go to the Bible for my warrant in all moral matters. Let 
your emissaries dare to venture to cross the Potomac, and I 
cannot promise you that their fate will be less than 
Hainan's." 

The learned Bishop of Vermont gave divine sanction to 
slavery with the following comment: "The slavery of the 
negro race appears to me to be fully authorized both in the 
Old and the New Testament." 

Dr. Thorwell, one of the leading Presbyterian divines of 
the South, commented in this manner: "The triumph of 

22 



Lincoln's principles is the death-knell of slavery. Let us 
crush the serpent in the egg." 

Reverend W. S. Plum, of Richmond, Virginia, made this 
statement regarding the Abolitionists: "Let them under- 
stand that they will be caught (lynched) if they come among 
us, and they will take good heed to keep out of our way." 

The Reverend Dr. Smythe, of Charleston, South Carolina, 
is recorded as saying: "The war is a war against slavery, 
and is therefore treasonable rebellion against the Word, 
Providence and Government of God." 

In the year 1854, Robert A. Fair, Esq., delivered an 
address before the Abbeville, South Carolina District Bible 
Society. Mr. Fair spoke on the subject of "The Christian 
duty of placing the Bible in the hands of the negro, and 
teaching him to read it." Some of the most interesting 
passages from that discourse have important bearings on the 
question of slavery: "If the teaching of the holy writ were 
at war with the institutions of slavery, and we were strug- 
gling to maintain it in opposition to those teachings; or if 
the proposition were to put the slave in possession of a 
knowledge of the arts and sciences — to confer a high degree 
of intellectual culture — fully to educate him, we might be 
disposed to yield the point. But how stands the case? Why, 
that the teachings of the Bible are not only not unfriendly 
to the institution of slavery, but that in those teachings the 
institution is most amply recognized. It is upon them that 
we triumphantly rest its defence. We would not be startled 
at the announcement of the fact, that two-thirds of our slave 
population do not know or believe that the subject of 
slavery, or their condition is alluded to in the Bible; that 
two-thirds of them are ignorant of the authority by which 
we essay to hold them in bondage, or demand their obedience 
and service. To such how galling is the yoke ! How bitter is 
the bondage!" 

In the State of Virginia, the land of whips, chains and 
hot branding irons, in the year 1849 a law was enacted 
making it criminal to teach any slave to read and write. 
Margaret Douglass was found guilty of violating that law. 
Her principal crime was to read the catechism and the New 
Testament to some colored children. 

The hanging of negroes was not enough and to give 
them a severe punishment, the State of Maryland, in the 
year 1729 enacted the following law: "The slave shall first 

23 



have the right hand cut off, then be hanged in the usual 
manner; the head be severed from the body, the body be 
divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters be set 
up in the most public places of the county where such act 
was committed." 

Dr. Shannon, an eminent Bible authority, wrote an argu- 
ment in favor of slavery: "Thus did Jehovah stereotype his 
approbation of domestic slavery, by incorporating it with 
the institutions of the Jewish religion, the only religion on 
earth that had the divine sanction." 

Reverend Alexander Campbell, Editor of the Millenial 
Harbinger, wrote thus: "Is the simple relation of master 
and slave necessarily and essentially immoral and un- 
christian, as that example of the adulterer and adultress? 
We are clearly and satisfactorily convinced it is not. It 
would be in our most calm and deliberate judgment, a sin 
against every dispensation religion, Patriarchal, Jewish and 
Christian, to suppose that the relationship of master and 
slave was, in its very nature and being, a sin against God 
and man. There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting 
slavery, but many regulating. It is not, then, we conclude, 
immoral. 

"The discipline of the church is the only discipline under 
which Christian slaves can be placed by Christian masters. 
If they will not faithfully serve their Christian masters, who 
'partake of the benefit' of their labor, then are they, after 
proper instruction and admonition, to be separated from the 
church and to be put under whatever other discipline a 
Christian master under the existing laws of the state, may 
inflict." 

John Randolph, of Kansas, denied that negroes had souls 
any more than horses or oxen. 

In North Carolina it was a crime to teach a slave to read 
and any violator was punished with thirty-nine lashes. The 
law read in part: "That teaching slaves to read and write 
tends to excite dissatisfaction in their minds and to produce 
insurrection and rebellion." 

An extract from a sermon published in South Carolina 
by the Society for the Advancement of Christianity, an 
organization made up of clergymen: "No man (nor set) of 
men in our day, unless they can produce a new revelation 
from heaven, are entitled to pronounce slavery wrong. 

24 



Slavery, as it exists at the present day, is agreeable to the 
order of Divine Providence." 

A resolution from the Southern Methodist Conference is 
as follows: "Resolved, that this conference disclaim any 
fellowship with Abolitionism. On the contrary, while it is 
determined to maintain its well know and long established 
position, by keeping the traveling preachers composing its 
own body, free from slavery, it is also determined not to hold 
connection with any ecclesiastical body that shall make non- 
slaveholding a condition of membership in the church; but 
to stand by and maintain the discipline as it is." 

Moses Stuart of Andover Theological Seminary set forth 
his views of American slavery. He wrote: "Slavery may 
exist without any violation of the Christian faith." This 
statement was further elaborated by the Reverend Wilbur 
Fish, D. D., President of the Wesleyan University in Con- 
necticut: "This doctrine of Professor Stuart will stand, be- 
cause it is the Bible doctrine. The relation of master and 
slave, may and does, in many cases under such circumstances 
as frees the master from the just charge and guilt of im- 
morality. The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the 
slave as an obligation due to a present rightful authority." 

In 1840, the general conference of the Methodists adopted 
the following resolution: "That it is inexpedient and un- 
justifiable for any preacher to permit colored persons to give 
testimony against white persons, in any state where they 
are denied that privilege by law." 

The following advertisement from the Charleston, South 
Carolina Courier for February 12, 1835, gives a very vivid 
impression of the times. "FIELD NEGROES. By Thomas 
Gladden, on Tuesday, the 17th inst., will be sold at the 
north of the Exchange, at 10 o'clock A. M. A prime gang 
of Ten Negroes, accustomed to the culture of cotton and 
provisions, belonging to the Independent Church, in Christ's 
church parish. February 6, 1835." 

In the same city the post office was invaded by a mob 
and the anti-slavery publications were burned with the 
sanction of the clergy. The Charleston Courier reported the 
matter thus : "The clergy of all denominations attended in 
a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding 
by their presence to the impressive character of the scene., 
The following resolution was adopted: 'That the thanks of 
this meeting are due to the reverend gentlemen of the clergy 

25 



of this city, who have so promptly and effectually responded 
to public sentiment, by suspending their schools in which 
the free colored population were taught; and that this meet- 
ing deems it a patriotic action, worthy of all praise and 
proper to be imitated by other teachers of similar schools 
throughout the state." 

Dr. Nelson, formerly a slave-holder, said: "I have been 
intimately acquainted with the religious opportunities of 
slaves in the constant habit of hearing the sermons which 
are preached to them. And I solemnly affirm, that during 
the forty years of my residence and observation in this line, 
I never heard a single one of these sermons that was not 
taken up with the obligations and duties of slaves to their 
masters. Indeed, I never heard a sermon to slaves but 
what made obedience to masters by the slaves, the funda- 
mental and supreme law of religion." (From Pillsbury's 
"The Church as it is '81.") 

The Association of Ministers and Messengers, assembled 
at Free Union, Virginia, resolved: "That we consider our 
right and title to this property (slaves) altogether legal and 
bona fide, and that it is a breach of the faith, pledged in the 
Federal Constitution, for our Northern brethren to try, either 
directly or indirectly, to lessen the value of this property or 
impair our title thereto. That we view the torch of the 
incendiary and the dagger of the mid-night assassin loosely 
concealed under the specious garb of humanity and religion 
so-called." 

Reverend Lucius Bolles, D. D., of Massachusetts, Cor- 
responding Secretary, Board of Foreign Missions, said in 
1834 : "There is a pleasing degree of union among the multi- 
plying thousands of Baptists throughout the land. Our 
Southern brethren are generally, both ministers and people, 
slave-holders." (Birney, "American Churches," p. 30 to 32.) 

Early in 1863 the religious bodies of the entire South 
united and issued an address to the Christians of the entire 
world: "The recent proclamation of the President of the 
United States, seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the 
South, is in our judgment an occasion for solemn protest on 
the part of the people of God." 

The "Washington Telegraph" exclaims as follows: "As a 
man, a Christian and a citizen, we believe that slavery is 
right; that the condition of the slave-holding states is the 
best existing organization of civil society." 

26 



The "New York Evangelist" in 1847 said : "To the shame 
of the Church it must be spoken, the foremost men of some 
of our philanthropic movements, in the interpretation of the 
spirit of the age, in the practical application of Christianity, 
in the reformation of abuses, in the vindication of the rights 
of man, are men who make no profession, and whom we 
have no reason to believe to be experimentally acquainted 
with Christianity. The Church has pusillanimously left not 
only the working oar, but the very reins of certain necessary 
reforms of the day, in the hands of men, who, if not before 
inimical to Christianity, will be made so by Christianity's 
neglect of what is its proper mission to look after. They 
are doing practically with all their might, for humanity's 
sake, what the Church ought to be doing as heartily through 
its ministry and representative men for Christ's sake. And 
if they succeed, as succeed they will, in abolishing slavery, 
in banishing intemperance, in killing war, in restraining in- 
temperance, in reforming social abuses, then the recoil upon 
Christianity, the antagonistic reaction from these Christian- 
ized sensibilities upon the cause of religion itself, will be 
disastrous in the extreme. Woe be to religion when irre- 
ligious men, by force of nature, or the tendency of the age, 
get ahead of the Church in morals and the practical work of 
Christianity. In some instances they are already a long 
way ahead. And we might specify individuals and journals 
in this country that are far before the recognized organs of 
the Church in the advocacy of truth, righteousness and 
liberty." 

In reporting the meeting of the National Foreign Mis- 
sionary Organization of the Baptist Church, the "Biblical 
Record and Southern Watchman" in 1841 said : "Our meetings 
were truly delightful. The spirit of the gospel prevailed and 
gave a tremendous shock to the abolitionist. All of our prin- 
cipal men are sound to the core on this vexed question." 

The Reverend Jonathan Davis of Boston, Massachusetts, 
on May 23, 1841, wrote a letter to one of his friends as 
follows: "It is proper for me to state that the mass of our 
brethren, both in Philadelphia and New York are opposed 
to Abolition, as now understood by that term, and are for no 
other measure than colonization. This has been the week of 
their anniversaries here and I suppose there has been not 
less than a hundred and fifty Baptists ministers, old and 

27 



young; and what I rejoiced to find was that the abolitionists 
among them were a small majority. I was invited on every 
hand to pulpits, and am even entreated to -deliver addresses 
on this particular subject, in various parts of the country." 

The New School Church at Petersburg, Virginia, resolved 
in 1838 that God had recognized the relation of master and 
slave, and that slavery was not a sin against Him. Also" the 
New School General Assembly in 1843 resolved: "That this 
Assembly does not think it for the edification of the Church 
for this body to take any action on the subject of slavery." 
During the session of the Assembly Reverend Dr. Hill of 
Virginia declared that some abolitionists had been lynched, 
and was met with this response : "They were served right." 

Parker Pillsbury, a noted abolitionist, said: "Slavery 
was a sin and crime of the north as well as the south. It 
was sustained by the government, it was sanctified by almost 
the whole religion of the nation." In 1841 Pillsbury wrote 
a letter to Stephen Foster in which he said : "If we scourged 
a pro-slavery clergy and church with whips last year, let us 
this year lay on with scorpions. Let us make every hold of 
spiritual tyranny send up its death shriek as we flash down 
the lightning of eternal truth, and roll its thunders among 
its darkest, deepest caverns. Let us write Tekel over 
every pro-slavery pulpit in characters of flaming fire, until 
the knees of every reverend Belshazzar who sits enthroned 
on it shall smite together. Armed with the truth we shall 
be omnipotent; and the hour has come. The groans of our 
three million bondmen have pierced the heavens, and the 
arms of the Almighty is made bare as of old, for deliver- 
ance. "We are prepared to be scandalized as infidels, and 
reviled as the enemies of man and God. To the popular pre- 
vailing religion we are infidels, and mean to be. Woe to 
such as are not! The pulpit of our land saith in its heart: 
'There is no God.' " It is corrupt. It has done abominable 
wickedness, and so has the church, which is its own handi- 
work. Our religious institutions have made themselves the 
bodyguard of slavery. We cannot come at the monster but 
through them. Let us not mistake; a pro-slavery religion 
must be hunted out of the land; too long it has cursed the 
earth. It has delighted in blood and tears; it has fattened 
on human misery. It has extorted groans and wailings from 
countless victims, but its own hour has come!" 

The churches' attitude in the matter is very clearly 

28 



shown by a headline which appeared in the Herald of Free- 
dom, July 22d, 1842. It read as follows : "Beach and Foster 
Imprisoned by the Church." Thomas P. Beach, one of the 
men mentioned, was an antislavery lecturer. After which he 
was beaten, and imprisoned through church instigation. From 
the Salem jail he wrote : "I will not stop to argue about the 
brutal and criminal methods of the clergy. Every instinct 
of my humanity, or anybody's, will sharply rebuke the cow- 
ardly, quivering spirit that should moot this query and 
respond to it. Is it right to speak for enslaved, crushed 
humanity any where? Right to speak in God's house for 
three hundred new-born babes, daily sacrificed to the 
Moloch of Slavery? Right to echo the prayer of 
three hundred and fifty thousands of women, members of 
nominal churches, that they may be delivered from the lust, 
violence, and degradation to which a man-stealing church 
and clergy have reduced them! Right to stand on the 
threshold of the sanctuary and cry in the ear of the dozing 
priest and deacon, thus guilty in fellowshipping hell itself 
as a Christian institution; to beseech them to lift their heel 
from. the neck of my wife, brother, sister, mother! Right to 
cry robber, adulterer, murderer, in the ear of the church 
that buys, sells and enslaves God's own image; that sells 
Jesus Christ at auction, and then declare they have not vio- 
lated the Christian faith! 0, Shame, where is thy blush? 
O, Spirit of 1835 and '37, where art thou? Does fear with 
thy courage or startle thee from thy high purpose to deliver 
the slave, at all hazards? Has law or desire for applause 
ennervated thy power or scattered those rays that once 
came flashing, burning from thine eyes? 0, if the state 
could have enough of this work to do, it would soon be sick 
of supporting the victims of church malice and sectarian 
hate! I want company here, I wish every jail in Massa- 
chusetts and New Hampshire filled with those who have 
boldness enough to go and charge upon these God dishonor- 
ing corporations, not only all the guilt, for the tears, stripes, 
groans and degradation of the slave, but also for the bolt- 
ing and barring of every prison door, the beheading and 
strangling of every criminal and culprit in the land, to- 
gether with all the blood shed, from Abel down to the pres- 
ent hour. I am in this prison for attempting to exercise 
speech freely as a man. I felt called upon to open my mouth for 
the slave, in places where professing Christians meet to 

29 



worship. Should I not obey that call? Am I a man, and 
may I not speak when I think, and feel that I ought to 
speak? Why am I made with the organs of utterance and 
capacities for thought and conviction if all may be con- 
trolled by the power of others? Why have I sympathies for 
my suffering kind if I may not let them flow out? 

"I spoke for the slave on my humanity's motion, and at 
the bidding of God, and I am here for it. Well, I will bear 
it as becomes a man. But let me tell my incarcerators, they 
commit a mighty mistake when they imprison a nature that 
knows how to endure privation like this. 

"I am a prisoner, but no matter it is experience — an inval- 
uable teacher. I am an abolitionist, now, and can remember 
them that are in bonds as bound with them. 

"Oh, the crime of making slaves of human beings! Of 
keeping them slaves! Oh, the responsibility which lies on 
this Christendom! Oh, the crime of professing godliness, 
and keeping humanity in slavery! This is the crime of the 
churches. Oh, the awful crime against God and man of 
assuming a priesthood, pretending to be Christian, and using 
its mighty influence to perpetuate human enslavement and 
hinder a movement for its overthrow! 

"Speech, glorious organ of reform among men, will it 
ever be free? Free, it would work wonders. Free, men and 
women would then speak like God. Now speech is en- 
chained. Men speak as they would walk, in fetter, and they 
look as they speak. The human look is cowered and brought 
down, and all human action seems constrained and servile." 

Parker Pillsbury was a member of the Suffolk North 
Association of Congregational Ministers in Massachusetts, 
and was expelled from that organization for exposing the 
scandal of the clergy's support of slavery. He wrote a letter 
to the Suffolk North Association of Divines in which he 
said: "I have the best evidence to show that the clergy, as 
a body, are determined to sustain each other in the crusade 
against the advocates of the rights of our enslaved fel- 
low men. The great body of the clergy in this state have 
been deadly hostile to anything like efficient action for the 
overthrow of slavery. I need not tell you that I have been 
compelled to excommunicate from my fellowship, most of the 
ministers of our land for the sin of conniving at American 
slavery. I regret to be compelled to add that even the Suf- 
folk North Association of Ministers are no exception; nor 

30 



can I recognize them as vested with any authority to decide 
who shall, or shall not be licensed to preach the gospel. You 
have shown yourselves in various ways, to be the friends of 
the southern oppressor, rather than of the oppressed. You 
have done well for the heathen abroad, perhaps, but have 
neglected three millions of heathen at the doors of your own 
sanctuaries. Most of you oppose directly, the agitation of 
the subject of slavery, in any manner, among your people. 
You are in full fellowship and communion with the slave- 
holding ministers of the South and their more guilty apologists 
in the North. 

"For ten years we have been laboring to awaken an 
interest in the churches in behalf of the bleeding slave. 
Labor enough has been done in New England to have made 
every church, as a church, the inflexible foe of oppression, 
as it exists at the south, had it not been for this mighty 
opposition that has been constantly thrown in the way by 
the pulpit. It has to be a mere truism that the firmest pil- 
lars of the bloody Moloch are the professed ministers of 
Jesus Christ; and in no part of these states have those 
ministers shown themselves more subservient to the will 
of slave-breeding and slave-holding ministers and others, 
than in Boston and vicinity. With your blood stained feet 
on the necks of three millions of your prostrate brethren, 
you are deliberately talking of "censure" and "resumption" 
of my "license," because I have faithfully espoused their 
cause ! v v v 

"Recreant should I be to the interest of My Redeemer's 
kingdom, to recognize such men as ministers of Christ. I 
know full well how the warning will be received; but still 
I warn you to repent. God has a controversy with you on 
this awful sin of enslaving millions of immortal human 
beings as yourselves, compelling them into absolute heath- 
enism, concubinage, adultery; robbing them of everything, 
wives, children, all the endearing relations of life, manhood, 
womanhood, with all else only to gratify the cupidity of 
an unrighteous and cruel master — blood. Your Christianity 
has less of humanity in it than has the religion of the 
Seminole savage! he befriends the slave and welcomes him 
to his wigwam; you, or most of you, are deaf as adders to 
his woe. Search the heathen world, ancient and modern; 
you shall look in vain for a system of greater abomination, 
more horrible cruelties than American slavery; and yet you 

' 31 



baptize and sanctify it, and admit it to full sacramental 
communion and fellowship. 

"The ancient Romans with hearts of steel, had their 
god of war; the ferocious Vandal had his god of vengeance; 
but none of their high places ever showed an altar to the 
fell demon of slavery. Never did the Nine Sisters hold 
fond dalliance with a fiend so foul; never was Apollo's golden 
lyre tuned to his praise; never did the wild harp of north- 
ern minstrelsy in all its long buried melodies, indite one hymn 
to the blood swollen vampire. Never was an altar reared to 
such divinity till the Christian slave chain was forged, and 
the Christian coffle formed; till torturing evangelical thumb- 
screws were invented, and human flesh had hissed and 
broiled beneath the red-hot branding iron, and the one 
eternal God, in the person of his children, his own image and 
likeness, was bought and sold in the shambles with the beasts 
that perish. 

"And now you, grave and venerable ministers, demand 
of me to fall down and reverence and worship your blood- 
besmeared idol on pain of "censure" or "resumption of the 
license" with which you invested me as a preacher of the 
gospel; and as logical consequence, expulsion from the 
church on earth, and the society of the redeemed in heaven! 
Brethren, you know you cannot deny what I say. 

"For three hundred years, your Christianity has been 
tearing at the vitals of Africa, like vultures snatching away 
from her bosom her poor sons and daughters in myriads, to 
supply the Christian slave-market of this and other nations. 
Her wailing has been borne on the trade-winds, on all the 
winds, to the ends of the earth. And yet to this hour, doc- 
tors of divinity dare doubt, dare openly deny that slavery is 
sin! and even such as feign to believe in sin make them- 
selves, by a strange silence or open connivance, more guilty if 
possible, or certainly more dangerous, than those who deny 
or doubt. 

"I repeat my denial that what is taught and professed 
by the great body of Clergy in this nation as Christianity 
is not Christianity at all. I confine myself wholly in this 
letter to slavery. To American chattel slavery. There are 
other accounts to be considered when slavery is overthrown. 
Let your intimated "censure" and "resumption of license" 
be carried into full execution. I shall preach the gospel of 

32 



Christ, and by his grace wash my hands from all participa- 
tion in your guilt on the awful crimes and cruelties of 
slavery." 

From Packard's "Grant's Tour", page 566, we learn that 
General Grant, the hero of our civil war, regarded the clergy 
as meddlesome fanatics and allies of deception and ignorance, 
and the most dangerous enemy with which a nation can con- 
tend." 

In spite of the church's criminal opposition, in spite of 
the organized mob, the abolitionist movement gained terri* 
tory and John Brown came to arouse a slave insurrection in 
the South. In the autumn of 1859 he seized the national 
arsenal at Harper's Ferry and began to free the slaves. He 
hoped with this action to force the emancipation of the 
slaves and make his name a terror in the hearts of the mer- 
cenary slave-traders. Cossacks were soon hurried and in 
the name of Christianity Brown was defeated and captured 
with several others. Brought to trial he was convicted and 
sentenced to die, by Judge J. B. O'Neale. 

As soon as John Brown was hanged the whole country 
was stirred by this tragedy. The' dreadful case created 
sorrow in every man's heart with the exception of the clergy. 
In protest against the atrocious sentence Lydia Maria Child 
wrote her famous message to Governor Wise of Virginia. 
Mrs. Child's protest was published in pamphlet form, and 
hundreds of thousands of copies were sold. 

To help the abolitionist's cause a noble woman, Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, in protesting against the Fugitive Slave 
Law in 1852 published "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a story which 
gave a mortal blow to slavery, and the tyrannical institution 
of black slavery fell. 

CIVIL WAR. 

The civil war like any other was fought by the 'workers 
for the interest of the capitalist class. "Once open hostility 
had begun, the actual fighting was carried on as it has been 
carried on in all wars, at least, since private property began, 
by those who did the work and had no interest in the out- 
come." ("Class Struggle in America," A. M. Simons.) 

"The workers never had anything in common with the 
ruling class, in any war, which is the fountain of gold for 
the masters' class and of poverty for the toilers. 

33 



"Wars have been waged for conquest, for plunder. In 
the middle ages the feudal lords, who inhabited the castles 
whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine — whenever 
one of these feudal lords wished to enrich himself, then he 
made war on the other. Why? They wanted to enlarge 
their domains. They wanted to increase their power, their 
wealth, and so they declared war upon each other. But they 
did not go to war any more than the Wall Street Junkers 
go to war. (Applause.) The feudal lords, the barons, the 
economic predecessors of the modern capitalist, they declared 
all wars. Who fought their battles? Their miserable serfs. 
And the serfs had been taught to believe that when their 
masters declared and waged war upon one another, it was 
their patriotic duty to fall upon one another, and to cut one 
another's throats, to murder one another for the profit and 
the glory of the plutocrats, the barons, the lords, who held 
them in contempt. And that is war in a nut-shell. 

'The master class has always declared war; the subject 
class has always fought the battles; the master class has 
had all to gain, and nothing to lose, and the subject class 
has had nothing to gain and all to lose — including their 
lives. (Applause.) They have always taught that it is 
your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves 
slaughtered at command. 

"But in all history of the world you, the people, never 
had a voice in declaring war. You have never yet had. 
And here let me state a fact — and it cannot be repeated too 
often: the working class who fight the battles, the working 
class who make the sacrifices, the working class who shed 
the blood, the working class have never yet had a voice in 
declaring war. The working class have never yet had a 
voice in making peace. It is the ruling class that does both. 
They declare war; they make peace. 

'Yours not to question why; 
Yours but to do and die.' " 
(Canton Speech, Eugene V. Debs, June 16th, 1918.) 

It is a well proven historical fact that it was not the 
desire of the Republican party to free the negroes, although 
it brought the Civil War. 

A. M. Simons, in his work, "Class Struggle in America," 
tells us: "To say that the Republican party was organized, 
or the Civil War waged to abolish chattel slavery is but to 

34 



repeat a tale invented almost a decade after the war was 
closed, as a means of glorifying the party of plutocracy and 
maintaining its supremacy." 

The protective tariff demanded by the northern capi- 
talists and opposed by the southern slave traders was the 
cause of the war. The northern capitalists were anxious 
to find a market for the produce of the farmers. The south- 
erners fearing the raising of the cost of feeding their slaves, 
bitterly opposed the north expansion, discouraging railroad 
building and manufacture. The south had run the govern- 
ment with great profit made out of the slave trade and a 
portion of the profit was used in buying more slaves. That 
profit was in danger and when the north asked for a protec- 
tive tariff the southern slave owners protested against that 
policy and asked for a free slave trade, to conquer more 
territory for King Cotton. The North refused to grant 
that privilege and the result was that the South seceded from 
the Union. Thus the tariff and not slavery was responsible 
for the Civil War. 

The Republican congress was against the freedom of the 
negro slaves, and President Lincoln held identical views. 
In 1861 congress passed a joint resolution declaring against 
any interference with slavery. The northern capitalists, loyal 
to their class were in favor of perpetual slavery. They 
were willing to let the southern brothers retain the slaves, 
provided they would return to the Union. 

The southern ruffians refused any compromises. "Mr. 
Lincoln's terms were conciliatory in the extreme. Had the 
South been moderate in its demand, he would have been 
classed with those statesmen who added compromise to com- 
promise, and so postponed the evil but inevitable day. He 
was not an abolitionist. He offered to give them any guar- 
antee they pleased — a constitutional amendment, if they de- 
sired it — that slavery as it stood should not be interfered 
with. He offered to bring in a more stringent law, by 
which their fugitive slaves should be restored. But on the 
matter of extension he was firm. The ultimatum was de- 
clined; the South seceded, and the North flew to arms, not 
to emancipate the negro, but to preserve the existence of the 
nation." ("Martyrdom of Man," Winwood Reade, p. 384-5.) 

When the Civil War broke out it was the same old cry: 
Workers you must follow the flag. You must furnish your 
lives for cannon fodder. The workers followed the flag and 

35 



fought a war for the benefit of their rulers in defence of a 
barbaric economic system. 

The southern ruling class (eight per cent) possessed slaves 
and wealth and the workers possessed two arms to work 
for them. 

During the Civil War the workers marched to fight and 
die, while the capitalists availed themselves of the exemption 
clause by paying a small sum of money. Military service 
in the confederate army was voluntary for the rich and 
compulsory for the poor. After the fall of Fort Donnelson, 
the confederate congress passed an ordinance which ex- 
empted any slave trader who owned more than twenty 
slaves. 

When Lincoln called for volunteers, the rich class failed 
to answer the call and when congress passed the draft act, 
John D. Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie 
and Jay Gould with the remainder of their class were ex- 
empted from military duty. The workers did not gain any- 
thing from that struggle, but they lost the lives of their 
youth. Poor deluded workers! On the other hand the cap- 
italist class was the only class to gain from that struggle. 

Pierpont Morgan refused to fight and entered business by 
buying condemned rifles from the Government. He paid $3.50 
for each rifle and resold the same to the Government for 
$22.50. The South lost the war and to repair the loss the con- 
federate congress repudiated three hundred million dollars of 
debts owing the North. 

The North was in peril of losing the war and to save 
their faces under the mask of love for the negro race, had to 
bow their heads and say: "To win the war, noble negro 
race, I give you freedom." 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Any cheap school history tells us about how great Lin- 
coln was. For the capitalist class Lincoln was a great man, 
but for the workers he was a tyrant like any other. 

Dietzgen speaking about historic names, in his "Philo- 
sophical Essays" said: "It is but a survival of the bar- 
barian past to regard great historical names, not only as 
brilliant leaders, but also as demi-gods, though such opinions 
are still prevalent among many learned as well as ignorant 
men." 

36 



. Lincoln, according to historical facts, was a strong pro- 
slavery man, as were, Washington, Madison and Hamilton. 

"Lincoln had early put himself on record as opposed to 
slavery, but he was never technically an abolitionist. He 
allied himself rather with those who believed that slavery 
should be fought within the constitution. Though it could 
not be constitutionally interfered with in individual states 
it should be excluded from territory over which the national 
government had jurisdiction." (Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 
p. 705.) 

On March 4, 1861, the President was inaugurated at 
Washington. In his inaugural address, he said : "I have 
no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the insti- 
tution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe that 
I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to 
do so." 

Lincoln in answer to Horace Greeley, abolitionist and 
editor of the New York Tribune, replied to Greeley's appeal, 
"The Prayer of Twenty Millions," with the following letter: 

Executive Mansion, Washington. 

August 22d, 1862. 
"Hon. Horace Greeley, 
Dear Sir: 

I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself 
through the New York Tribune. If there be in it state- 
ments or assumptions of fact which I may know to be 
erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If there 
be any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, 
I do not now and here argue against them. If there be 
perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive 
it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always 
supposed to be right. 

"As to the policy I seem to be pursuing, as you say, I 
have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 

"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way 
under the constitution. The sooner the national authority 
can be restored, the nearer the Union will be the 'Union as 
it was.' If there be those who would not save the Union 
unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not 
agree with them. If there be those who would not save 
the Union unless they could at the same time destroy 
slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object 

37 



in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either 
to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union with- 
out freeing any slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it 
by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it 
by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do 
that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do 
because I believe it would help to save this Union; and what 
I forbear doing, I forbear because I do not believe what I 
am doing hurts the cause, and I shall adopt new views so 
fast as they shall appear to be true views. I here state my 
purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend 
no modification of my oft expressed personal wish that all 
men, everywhere, could be free. 

Yours, 

A. Lincoln." 

This letter makes clear that Lincoln was not inspired 
with the love of the negro when he declared war against 
the south. Wars arise from economic causes. 

"Under a capitalist era, the principal causes of wars 
are not religious or national differences, but the economic 
antagonisms to which the ruling class of the different coun- 
tries are driven by the mode of production. Just as the 
capitalist unceasingly sacrifices the life and the health of 
the workers on the battlefield of labor, he feels no scruple 
in making them shed their blood in view of the new profits 
to be obtained by the conquest of new openings. 

"War is the fatal outcome of the actual economic condi- 
tions. It will but definitely disappear with the total dis- 
appearance of the capitalist order, the emancipation of 
labor and the international triumph of socialism." (From 
the Paris Socialist Congress of 1889.) 

"War whatever its issue, is a rain of gold for the pro- 
viders of card-board boot-soles or damaged meat, for the 
railway companies, for the bankers, who after the defeat 
negotiate loans of five million for indemnities, for the gun- 
makers and cartridge manufacturers who, during the war, 
unload their stocks, and who, once the war is finished, set to 
work to heap up new supplies improved in accordance with 
latest experience. What a gold mine patriotism is for the 
ruling classes; but also what a fool's trap for the people!" 
("My Country Right or Wrong," Gustave Herve, p. 112.) 

38 



THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 

Slavery was finally abolished during the Civil War be- 
cause the negro's emancipation could be utilized as a 
political whip by the north in its struggles against the rebel 
states. The confederate army fought, not to perpetuate the 
institution of slavery, but for the principle of states' rights. 
The Emancipation Proclamation was not issued until the 
middle of the Civil War and did not become effective in fact 
until Lee's surrender at Richmond. The north fought to 
perpetuate the union, rather than free the black man who 
filled the bread baskets of the rebel army. 

Lincoln's cabinet was divided on the advisability of 
issuing the proclamation and it was only after months of 
delay and much bitter argument between the president's 
divided advisors that it was finally issued as a matter of 
political strategy, diplomatic expediency; an extreme 
measure to stiffen the morale of the disheartened north- 
erners. 

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a last 
resort to break the morale of the south. He previously 
threatened to free the slaves (on paper) if the rebel troops 
did not yield by the first of January, 1862. But when this 
time came the troops of the confederacy were at the height 
of almost unbroken victories. The laurels of the first two 
years of war went nearly altogether to the dauntless and 
impetuous confederate champions of slavery and states' 
rights. 

LYNCH LAW. 

The origin of the infamous Lynch Law is obscure. 
Different writers have attempted to trace it to Ireland, to 
England and to Russia. But it is the general belief that the 
name Lynch was derived from Charles Lynch, Virginia 
planter, who was born at Chestnut Hill, Va., in the year 
1736, and died in 1796. He was a Justice of the Peace in 
Virginia after 1774 and in 1780, toward the close of the 
war for Independence, greatly increased his power by taking 
into his own hands the law and inflicting severe penalties in 
the punishment of Tories or Loyalists in Bedford County, Va. 

Lynch was a zealous church member, a powerful man 
and a member of the Virginia Legislature. "In 1776 he was 
a delegate to the famous Virginia Convention and later in 
1781, an officer in the American Army." (From "Real Judge 
Lynch," Atlantic Monthly, Volume XXXVIII, Boston, 1901.) 

39 



THE LYNCHING. 
By Claude McKay. 

His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven. 

His father, by the cruelest way of pain, 

Had bidden him to his bosom once again; 

The awful sin remained still unforgiven. 

All night a bright and solitary star 

(Perchance the one that ever guided him, 

Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim.) 

Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char. 

Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view 

The ghostly body swinging in the sun 

The women thronged to look, but never a one 

Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; 

And little lads, lynchers that were to be, 

Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee. 

THE SHAME OF AMERICA. 

Since the introduction of this new cruelty, namely, lynch- 
ing, negroes have been killed by hundreds. According to the 
latest statistics nearly 4000 persons have been lynched in the 
United States. The figures from 1892 to 1920 are as follows : 

1892 293 1908 100 

1895 171 1909 87 

1896 131 1910 74 

1897 106 1911 71 

1898 127 1912 64 

1899 107 1913 48 

1900 115 1914 59 

1901 135 1915 69 

1902 96 1916 . 55 

1903 104 1917 38 

1904 87 1918 67 

1905 66 1919 84 

1906 60 1920 to Nov. 20th 50 

1907 63 

Included in the above table are the names of 83 women 
who suffered a like fate with the men. The figures are 
taken from the Chicago Daily News Year Book for 1921. 

The Asian Review, speaking in protest against the burn- 
ing of Henry Yowery at Nordena, Arkansas, in 1921, said : 
"It is an indelible stain on the name of America that, in this 

40 



enlightened age, such crimes should take place publicly and 
the offenders go unpunished. It goes to demonstrate the 
utter callousness of the heart of the American public. 
Lynching is possible in the United States because the spirit 
of America is in favor of it. If this were not true, this foul 
crime would never have grown to its present proportions nor 
would any of the more than three thousand lynchings dur- 
ing the past thirty-two years have taken place." 

So without any serious attempt at interference, by the 
authorities, the unfortunate negroes have been and still are, 
upon the slightest provocation, barest suspicion or most 
superficial circumstantial evidence, lynched, hanged and even 
roasted alive. All this barbarism continued openly and un- 
abated during the second decade of the twentieth century, 
amidst the cheers of the patriotic populace of professing 
Christians and the frenzied applause of the ignorant multi- 
tude. Stirred by the savage leadership of an uncouth, brutal 
ruling class, mobs are led to perpetrate the most barbarous 
and outrageous acts, often resulting in needless bloodshed 
and serious miscarriage of justice. 

These conditions have apparently enjoyed the unqualified 
sanction of the factors that dominate the church and state 
for "Lynch Law" has been passively tolerated, if not openly 
encouraged and condoned for many years. Since the early 
days of Judge Lynch, no strenuous organized effort has been 
made, aside from some occasional and inconsequential local 
agitation, to terminate this disgraceful state of intermittent 
lawlessness, which still obtains in open defiance of justice, 
law and order. 

These outrages recur from time to time apparently un- 
hindered by civil or divine tribunals, especially throughout 
the south, at frequent intervals. Such a system of racial 
bigotry, camouflaging as justice, forces the blood in all 
honest men to boil in righteous indignation. We agree with 
the poet Henley who might well have said: "Under the 
bludgeonings of fate the black man's head is bloody but un- 
bowed." 

THE CRIME OF THE CLERGY. 

Why do not the clergy of America put an end to such 
unchristian practices? The ministry and church should be 
according to the holy book God's representative and servant. 

41 



When this hypocritical and theoretical supposition is aban- 
doned, the clergy will then be seen by all tiie world in their 
true light, for what they really are and always have been ; 
nothing more nor less than willing tools of the master class, to 
whom their real supplications, homage and support have al- 
ways been loyally rendered. 

Whether the priests and preachers of early colonial days 
were directly responsible for the origin of slavery in America, 
or whether they were merely indirectly or morally respon- 
sible, has been a problem of more than passing interest. 
The church either incurred direct responsibility by definite 
encouragement and participation in the nefarious traffic 
itself, or was simply indirectly responsible through passive 
condonation and subtly lending contenance to the business 
of buying and selling living human beings as though they 
were mere chattel. Through failing to actively oppose, de- 
nounce and fight this barbarous, unchristian practice at each 
step from its very inception, the clergy perpetrated one of 
the blackest crimes of omission of which we have historic 
record. 

Indeed, upholders of the slave trade, in the pre-civil war 
days, went so far as to justify their human exploitation and 
profiteering in living beings, by pointing to the unquestioned 
precedent recorded in the Pentateuch and established their 
case by reference to the Mosaic code. To dispute the truth 
and authenticity of the scriptures when dealing with 
churchmen is to abandon all claims to sanity, decency and 
common sense, but the facts speak for themselves. 

Slavery was justified by the clergy even before the dis- 
covery of America, upon the ground that it tended to 
Christianize the negro, subjecting him to the elevating ( ?) , 
uplifting (?), and civilizing (?) influence of a superior (?) 
race. The slave trader never failed to pose (and doubtless 
believed himself to be) as a God-fearing, honorable citizen 
of unquestionable integrity and righteousness. He cus- 
tomarily occupied the front pews in the churches. And woe 
unto him who dared to cast reflections upon the sancti- 
monious, slave trader or upon the angelic purity of his call- 
ing. 

True, it appears that no one ever ventured such pre- 
posterous reflections, with the possible exception of the Ger- 
man Quakers. But these were instantly branded, "ignorant 

42 



foreigners", totally bereft of all understanding- of American 
ideals and institutions. 

The failure of the churches, the clergy, ministry and 
priesthood to unhesitatingly, outspokenly and absolutely con- 
demn the principle, institution and trade of slavery at the 
very outset, was responsible for the traffic. That responsibility 
of the clergy for much of the subsequent suffering of the negro 
race, is obvious. That it was a ghastly crime of omission, a 
crime of the clergy, cannot be denied. 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CLERGY. 

The clergy is responsible for many of the atrocities with 
which the monopolizing master class have defied all codes of 
righteousness and stained with innocent blood the soil of 
America. Read the daily press reports of the cowardly 
abuse, prejudice, lawlessness, discrimination and maltreat- 
ment of the American negro in industry and politics today. 
All these crimes against negro citizens and laborers have 
their primary origin in the ignorance of the masses and the 
prostitution of the clergy, who are unwilling to expose, and 
often eager to support their vicious masters. 

It has always been the historic mission of those that 
"wear the holy cloth" to keep the negro in subjection and 
in a perpetual state of religious, civic and economic subordi- 
nation. We cannot find words sufficiently strong to express 
the horror which this monstrous business of slavery, once 
racial, now economic, arouses within us. If you read history 
without prejudice, with your senses alert, your vision clear 
and your mind neither colored and distorted by prejudice or 
bias, you will find the introduction of slavery one of the most 
brutal, wanton and atrocious events that ever stained the 
pages of American history. Even the treachery of the white 
man in his dealings with the American Indians; the robbery 
of the vast expanse of rich oil and mineral lands from Mexico 
under the subterfuge of patriotism, (a crude cloak to camou- 
flage the truly vicious greed of an avaricious people, in- 
toxicated with their own sense of power, might and grandeur) 
is not excepted. 

The clergy, representing the capitalist oppressor, has 
antagonized and persecuted the negro in every field of human 

43 



progress. The repeated campaigns that have aimed to in- 
cense public opinion against the negro people, were instigated 
and promoted by the clergy, with the support of the ruling 
class. 

THE PROSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY. 

The aim of the clergy has ever been to keep the long 
suffering people of the negro race in darkness, ignorance 
and servitude. No careful student of history or discriminat- 
ing spectator of life can doubt that the clergymen of today 
are but putty in the hands of the unproductive, exploiting, 
parasitic class whose begrudging contributions keep open the 
doors of the nearly empty churches. The clergy have always 
been one of the strongest tools of the moneyed class, one of 
capitalism's most corrupt weapons of offence and defence. 
Every preacher and priest, in a sense, is a special policeman 
who exerts his power unimpeded only so long as he serves 
the ruling class that doles out to him his more or less meager 
income from their unlimited wealth. 

The more affluent you find a priest or minister to be, the 
more woefully corrupt he has probably been. The greater 
the luxury and ease in which a churchman may bask, the 
more reasonably certain you may be that he has un- 
scrupulously prostituted his talents and shamefully sold his 
birthright, ideals and principles for the "mess of pottage," 
with which capital ever rewards its good and faithful 
servants. The clergy have always been safely relied upon to 
support and protect the vicious economic exploiters of the 
weak and oppressed. Many of the clergy are quite as 
ignorant and sottish as their communicants and parishioners. 
In our estimation the clergy are at best but a gigantic army 
of idle fakers, swindling charlatans and vicious loafers. An 
honorable profession indeed! 

The priest and the preacher represent a class which are 
indirectly responsible for the spilling of innocent blood. 
They use the vast treasures and resources of the church to 
fight in the ranks of capital against the producers in the 
struggle for economic justice. In spite of the gigantic con- 
spiracy of centuries, based on hypocritical and camouflaged 
"faith", the fabric of superstition upon which religion rests is 
crumbling before the triumphant advances of modern science 
and the light of truth. As a conclusive proof of the responsi- 

44 



bility of the clergy for the institution of slavery, and as damn- 
ing evidence of the fact that the forces of the church were 
wantonly prostituted to serve the most fiendish purposes, dur- 
ing the civil war days, and that the overwhelming majority of 
the clergy were ranged against President Lincoln, in alli- 
ance with the devilish capitalistic forces that were striving to 
perpetuate the bondage and exploitation of the black man, we 
submit the following quotation from Abraham Lincoln, him- 
self, in his famous address on "The Church and Ministers." 

"The United States Government must not undertake to 
run the churches. When an individual in a church, or out of 
it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be 
checked. 

"I am approached with the most opposite opinion and 
advice, and by religious men who are certain they represent 
the Divine Will. I hope it will not be irreverent in me 
to say, that if it be probable that God would reveal his will 
to others, on a point connected with my duty, it might be 
supposed that he would reveal it directly to me. 

"Here are twenty-three ministers of different denomi- 
nations, and all of them are against me but three; and here 
are a great many prominent members of the churches, a 
very large majority of whom are against me. All the 
powers of the earth seem rapidly combining against him 
(the negro). Mammon is after him — and the theology of 
the day is fast joining the cry. 

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and 
each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange 
that any man should dare to ask God's assistance in wring- 
ing his bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let 
us 'judge not, that we be not judged'. The prayers of both 
could not be answered. That of neither has been answered 
fully. 

"Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from 
the interests of the people and who, most of them at any 
rate are, taken as a mass, at least one long step from honest 
men. If the policy of the government, upon vital questions 
affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by 
decisions of the Supreme Court, the people will have ceased 
to be their own rulers. When a white man governs himself, 
that is self government. But when he governs himself and 

45 



also governs some other men, that is worse than self-govern- 
ment, — that is despotism. What I do mean to say is that no 
man is good enough to govern another man without that 
other's consent. 

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people 
who inhabit it. Wherever they shall grow weary of the 
existing government, they can exercise their constitutional 
right way of amending it. Why should there not be a patient 
confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any 
better or equal hope in the world?" 

These immortal words of President Lincoln show clearly 
and conclusively, not only where he stood on the principle 
and problem of slavery, but also where the church and 
the clergy of the time stood and with which side their in- 
fluence was thrown in the great fight to emancipate the 
negroes. 

AMERICA. 
By Claude McKay. 

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, 
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, 
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess 
I love this culture's hell that tests my youth ! 
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, 
Giving me strength erect against her hate, 
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. 
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state, 
I stand within her walls with not a shred 
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. 
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, 
And see her might and granite wonders there, 
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand, 
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. 

LIBERTY AND FREEDOM. 

« 

The writer, a native of Italy, pronounces it a paradox of 
destiny, the height of ridiculous sarcasm that a country re- 
sponsible for such atrocities as the wholesale enslavement of 
a people, the economic exploitation of a race, as well as for 
frequent lynchings of negro suspects, without orderly pro- 

46 



ceedure or trial by jury, should still be called "The Land of 
the Free and the Home of the Brave." 

How can the United States be designated as "The Cradle 
of Liberty" when it stands convicted of the most nefarious 
plundering of the red men and Mexicans as well as the most 
infamous cruelties toward the negro race and the systematic 
exploitation of its millions of producers and honest toilers 
by the parasitic idle rich. 

The ruling class in America from 1860 to 1880 saw the 
necessity of having strong support from the clergy and the 
church, hence they compelled the negroes, whether they 
would or no, to affiliate with so-called Christian churches. 
This was more barbarous than the practice of the early 
Ottoman Turk, who spread acceptance and allegiance to 
Mohammed as "Prophet of God, Defender of the Faithful", 
by fire and sword. It was feared, should the persecutions 
against the colored race cease, and the negro be allowed to go 
his way in peace ; to educate his children, he might rise against 
the despotic rule of the tyrants. The fear was spread from 
the pulpit and the press that should the negro ever be granted 
political liberty and civil freedom, conditions would eventually 
and inevitably arise that would bring about the destruction of 
the white man's prosperity, property and power, if not the 
race itself in America. 

ECONOMIC EMANCIPATION. 

The spread of education and enlightenment has slowly 
but surely marked the doom of religion and capital. With the 
dispelling of the clouds of dogma, bigotry, intolerance and 
hypocrisy from the minds of the workers, religious autocracy 
has lost its power. In this great struggle of the centuries, 
capital and clergy are ranged against the champions of the 
individual's political, civic, religious and economic freedom. 
No more faith in divine religion, however, can be again 
successfully forced upon the now awakened working 
class. It is knowledge, not faith, that the workers 
demand. Proof not promises! Economic justice here and 
now is that on which the producers of the world insist — not 
religious salvation in the sweet by and by! In these days 
of the great class-conscious awakening of the workers, the 
negro in common with his numberless white fellow toilers, is 

47 



beginning to think and act for himself, with clear vision and 
logical reasoning faculties, stimulated by a gnawing hunger 
for justice that will not be denied and an insatiable craving 
for knowledge and truth with which to replace superstition, 
suppositions and speculative theories of the past. The toilers 
demand freedom and liberty in the place of the thraldom, 
peonage, serfdom and economic slavery that has been their 
lot throughout the ages. 

Forward, negroes, forward! Your racial emancipation 
may be partially won, but your economic emancipation 
through the great class struggle that is going on all about 
you, has but begun. You must advance from victory on to 
victory until full recognition and equality with your white 
fellow-workers is ultimately attained and the old dark days 
of race hatred, oppression and persecution have been re- 
placed with the resplendent light of universal brotherly love 
and the stimulating glow of the new economic freedom that 
is to come. In spite of difficulties, and obstacles, the workers 
of all races, nations, colors, creeds and castes, must march 
on, a unified, solidified, invulnerable host, until the earth is 
cleared of tyranny and the chains of racial, social, civic, 
religious, economic and industrial slavery are relegated 
where they belong, to the archaic, outgrown, discarded past. 

The possibilities of the future can be estimated by the 
progress we have made in the last seventy years. Samuel 
W. Ball in reviewing the past says : 

"In its day negro slavery was an institution sanctioned 
by law and ethics. It was justified by the school, the church 
and the state. Both the dominant thought of the age and the 
physical arm of the state were relied upon to defend this 
institution, now regarded as a disgrace and a blot upon the 
fair fame of our beloved country. Christians now deplore 
as a series of grievous blunders, the inquisition that once 
tortured and burned at the stake the unbelieving thinker, or 
hanged on Gallows Hill witches and dissenters of the early 
church. It is only recently that Joan of Arc, martyred 
heretic, has been sainted by the Catholic church. A whole 
library of history could be written, showing the evolution in 
men's ideas of what constitutes crime and proper punish- 
ment, and in the corresponding ideas of what is worthy, 
admirable and righteous. 

"The criminals of yesterday are the heroes of today. John 
Brown who was legally executed, William Lloyd Garrison 



48 



who was mobbed and dragged through the streets with a 
rope around his neck, Love joy who was slain as an enemy 
of sanctioned institutions, are now commemorated in halls of 
fame. Other institutions existing today are rapidly coming 
into the same disrepute in which negro slavery has been 
held since the days of its gallant opposers." 



"EDUCATIONAL CALL." 

Ye sons of labor, arise from pollution; 
Arise for the Social Revolution; 
Arise with education ; enemy of might 
For labor's emancipation and right. 

Ring, Bells of revolution, ring 
Throughout a world of suffering, 
'Till thy echoes resound, loud and clear 
Hastening Capital's downfall here. 

Arise ye slaves of land and sea; 
Raise the workers' brave flag fervently; 
Wave the torch of freedom and liberty; 
Arise to thy death, — or victory. 

Education and solidarity, our charm 
For a better future, safe from alarm, 
In a world where freedom from tyranny 
Shall reward our struggle to be free. 

A world free from poverty, exploitation and strife, 

Industrial oppression and grim prison life; 

A world free from the tyrant greed; 

With producers triumphant industrially freed. 



RAPID SPREAD AND INCREASE 
OF NEGRO POPULATION IN AMERICA. 

Since the civil war the negro race in America has nearly 
tripled in population. In 1860 there were 4,442,830 blacks in 
the United States. Only 488,070 of these were free. In 
1870 the census reports show 4,880,009 free negroes in 

49 



America. The 1880 census recorded 6,580,793 negroes re- 
siding within our borders. In 1890 the population was given 
as 7,488,788. By 1900 it had risen to 8,840,789, and in 1910 
the population of the blacks in the United States came very 
close to the ten million mark, the total being 9,828,294. The 
latest census report, that of 1920, shows a negro population 
of over 10,163,013, approximately 11% of the total popu- 
lation, or an increase of approximately 120% in 50 years. 
The white population of the United States in 1880 was 
43,402,970; by 1890, 55,101,258; for 1900, 66,809,196; for 
1910, 81,731,957; for 1920, 94,820,915. Less than 57,000,000 
were immigrants. This steady influx of immigration alone 
is all that enables the white population to maintain their 
racial supremacy through proportionate increase in total 
population. What the whites lose by a proportionate com- 
parison of the birth rates of the races, they must balance by 
immigration or soon be outnumbered. 



NEGRO CENTER OF POPULATION. 

A press dispatch from Washington, October 11th, 1922, 
states : "The Department of Commerce announced today that 
the center of negro population as determined by the Bureau 
of Census on the basis of the fourteenth census enumeration 
is located in the extreme northwestern corner of Georgia, in 
Dade County, about one and three-quarter miles north- 
northeast of the town of Rising Fawn, in latitude 34 de- 
grees, 46 minutes, 52 seconds and longitude 85 degrees, 30 
minutes, 48 seconds. 

For the first time in history this center has moved north- 
east, being approximately 9.4 miles further east and 19.4 
miles further south in 1920 than it was in 1910. The 
former movements have been in a southeasterly direction. In 
1790 it was located 25 miles west-southwest of Petersburg, 
Dinwiddie County, Va., and one hundred years later, in 1890, 
it had moved southwest 463 miles to a point 15.7 miles 
southwest of Lafayette, Walker County, Georgia. Between 
1890 and 1900 it crossed the state line into Alabama, its 
location in 1900, and again in 1910 to DeKalb County, 
Alabama. Its northwestward movement after 1910 has 
brought it back to Georgia. The department's review made 
the following comment on the case of the movement : 

50 



"The northeasterly movement of the center of negro 
population between 1910 and 1920 is due principally to the 
great increase of negro population in Massachusetts, Con- 
necticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Vir- 
ginia, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. The total increase in 
the negro population of the United States was 635,368, and 
it will be noted that the increase in the northern states men- 
tioned was 56% of the total increase. This northward 
movement of the negro population was due mainly to the 
expansion of certain industries during the world war and 
the high wages paid being the great attraction. It is prob- 
ably true that there has been considerable return movement 
since the war, due to depression in certain industries, and 
that a large number of negroes have moved south to their 
former homes." 

THE BLACK PERIL. 

The birth rate of the black is 5.7 per cent greater than 
the white. Should the blacks continue to gain, what will 
then eventually become of the dominant white race, the 
capitalist class, the state and the church? Obliteratum, 
exiterminatus, destruction ! 

We leave to those, whose vicious interests lead them to 
continue to stir up race hatred and riots, by one subterfuge 
or another, to worry over the problem of the rapid increase 
of the black population in America. From our standpoint 
this situation presents no horrifying terror, but is the natural 
result of historic conditions. The capitalists are reaping 
just what they may well have expected when they first 
undertook to transplant a noble prolific race from a state of 
freedom in its native African shores to one of economic life 
servitude on the then newly discovered continent of America. 

It is therefore, easy to understand why the powers that 
be, fearing the overthrow of their supremacy and tyrannical 
arrogant dominance, permit the bitter prejudice and bigoted 
persecution that has characterized the white race's attitude 
toward their black brothers for the past five hundred years, 
to continue unchecked in America. 

Do you longer wonder at the meaning of all this race 
hatred, all this prejudice, discrimination and violence against 
the black race, with which the pages of our country's history 
are stained? Are race riots and lynch-law necktie parties 

51 



still mystery to you? Or do you now see at last that they 
are the result of deliberately planned, carefully camouflaged, 
but none the less insidious and vicious capitalistic propa- 
ganda? And what are the motives that inspire this per- 
sistent dastardly cunning agitation, but a desire on the part 
of those who seek to perpetuate the present capitalistic system 
to prevent the black and white workers, the economic slaves 
of today, from becoming united as one strong labor class. 

THE MENACE OF THE KU KLUX KLAN. 

The shadow of the Invisible Empire is expanding through 
the United States like wild fire. It is disseminating fear 
and hatred among the workers. The dominant class in 
society, the capitalists, look upon the Ku Klux Klan as a 
savior from the indomitable advance of the working class to 
power. 

The Ku Klux Klan, at present, finds sympathy and sup- 
port among the politicians and in all the Protestant churches. 
The Catholic church in the United States is in opposition to 
the Ku Klux Klan not because they condemn acts of violence 
but because of discrimination in membership. Should the 
Ku Klux Klan decide to make a change in its Consti- 
tution and admit Catholics into its fellowship there are 
reasons to believe that the Klan will be overwhelmed with 
applications. Also, there is evidence that Pope Pius XI will 
sanction the whole proceeding with his fatherly blessing. 

To prove the foregoing statement one needs only observe 
the Fascisti organization in Italy where the Pope has 
materially supported it in acts of violence perpetrated on 
the Italian working class. 

Since 1919, Italy has been under mob-rule. Thousands of 
Chambers of Labor and Co-operative stores have been 
burned. Social clubs, libraries and printing presses have 
been destroyed by the Fascisti and the Pope as the Holy 
Father of the Catholic Church has given his approval to all 
these barbaric deeds. 

According to press dispatches, President Obregon of 
Mexico has expelled the Catholic Delegate, Ernesto Fillippi, 
charging him, first, with violation of the Mexican Consti- 
tution, which forbid the holding of any outdoor religious 
service or procession. Second, implicating him in the 
organization of a Fascisti movement in Mexieo. President 

52 



Obregon frankly stated that the Catholic Church of Mexico 
is opposed to all progressive ideas and in general against 
the working class progress and that in the near future it 
will be the duty of the Mexican Government to expel all 
priests and missionaries who by their teachings interfere 
with the industrial development of Mexico. This is evidence 
that the purposes of the Catholic Church, Fascisti and the 
Ku Klux Klan are in accord and have a common bond of 
sympathy. 

From historical facts we know that the Catholic Church 
has at all times been the friend of the oppressors and the 
enemy of the oppressed. The black pages of the history of 
the Catholic Church are covered with the blood of thousands 
of workers, killed and sacrificed to the altar of Moloch. 

What is the Ku Klux Klan? It is an organization of 
100%, yellow and immoral ruffians organized to fight the 
workers. 

The aim of the Ku Klux Klan is to fight organized labor, 
plus hatred of the negroes and the Jews, labeled 100% 
American and rolled up in the Stars and the Stripes. This 
organization is modeled like the Italian Fascisti and their 
barbaric method is to kill all who have a different opinion 
than they. We cannot find a single particle of manhood 
among these savage members of the Ku Klux Klan. They 
work in darkness because they have not the courage to come 
out and fight like men. The method is very plain, to kidnap 
a victim, give him a coat of tar and feathers, compel him 
to kiss the flag and in some instances to murder him. All 
this in the name of 100 9; Americanism. 

After the fiasco of the American Legion the Ku Klux 
Klan was organized to fight the progress of the working 
class and its aim is not to fight the negro or Jew capitalist 
but to crush the workers only. The Ku Klux Klan and the 
capitalist class have everything in common. The former 
was organized to protect the interests of the latter. What 
is the answer to the menace of this new tyranny? The only 
answer is to organize as a class. 

Workers, unite wherever you are, black or white, Jew or 
gentile, Christian or infidel, stand together, fight together, 
for the emancipation of the working class. It is only 
industrial solidarity that will save us from the menace of 
the Ku Klux Klan and from the tyranny of the capitalist 

53 



system: "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to 
loose but your chains and a world to gain." 

INDUSTRIAL SOLIDARITY. 

For it is obvious, if the black and the white laborers 
once join hands, and press forward together, determined to 
make common cause of their common grievances against 
their common capitalistic foe, then even those unscrupulous, 
bloody forces, allied against the workers, will be powerless to 
avert the impending overthrow of the master class. For in 
the complete economic unity and industrial solidarity of the 
workers, black, white and yellow, of all industries and 
occupations, there lies unconquerable strength and irre- 
sistible power. 

Join hands, then, black and white wage slaves, arise! 
Unite and co-operate till your common foe, capitalism is no 
more! 

METHODS AND MOTIVES. 

The solution of the negro problem from the workers' 
standpoint entails the same vital issues that underlie the 
solution of the economic problem of industry in general. 
These issues will never be solved permanently until the 
capitalistic system and all that goes with it is discarded or 
abolished and the real producers and workers of the world 
come into possession of the machinery of production which 
they should rightfully own. This would put an end to the 
unscrupulous exploitation of the workers by the capitalist 
class. These parasitic monopolists have succeeded in keep- 
ing the toilers under the domination of their bloody yoke, 
only by the cruel and dastardly application of their one re- 
maining excuse for retaining power, the possession of the 
money lash, of capital, and the property whip of commerce, 
through which they control and dominate industry, state and 
church alike, at the present time. 

The uniformed pawns of the moneyed masters, the blue 
uniformed police and khaki clad soldiers, together with the 
wearers of the black cloth of the church, the prostituted 
clergy, are the greatest enemies of labor and the grimmest 
menaces confronting the progress of civilization today. 

54 



As long as capital can continue to distract the masses 
and divert their attention from the real dominating issues 
of the class struggle, by subterfuge, playing upon class and 
race hatreds, etc., and as long as the black and white laborers 
can be kept in antagonistic ignorance through systematic 
camouflage and through poisoned falsified publicity; as long 
as they can pit one group of workers against another, play- 
ing upon the instincts of race hatred, natural antipathy and 
emotional repulsions; so long will they continue to play the 
game from both ends, stirring up as much strife, dissension 
and conflict as possible between the two great major races 
of which the American working class is composed. But why 
all this malicious agitation and propaganda? It is only to 
stave off the day of their approaching downfall as long as 
possible. 

For the handwriting is already clear and unmistakable 
upon the wall of human consciousness, and these last feeble 
efforts of the corporate oppressors, represent but a vain at- 
tempt to keep the tottering legs of capital from crumbling 
beneath its own overbalanced weight. They seek to stave 
off for a little while longer, if possible, the impending over- 
throw of the present barbarous system of human exploitation, 
which threatens in the very near future, in spite of all 
efforts to delay the desperate last moment, to come tumbling 
about the heads of those responsible for its perpetuation. 

THE SOLUTION— INDUSTRIAL EMANCIPATION. 

The days of black human slavery are over, but the bar- 
barism of the white industrial slavery that has supplanted it 
is even more vicious and repulsive. The workers are no 
longer to be deluded by soft oily misstatements of their 
true relation with capital — their natural enemy, with whom 
they have nothing in common. The issue is clear, and even 
the priests and clergy are unable to longer ward off the im- 
pending doom from the heads of their unprincipled masters. 
Traffic in "black ivory" is a thing of the past. Traffic in 
"white ivory" (industrial exploitation and economic slavery) 
has become even more savage and reprehensible. 

Men are no longer willing to slave in order to exist. Black 
and white workers alike clearly understand the inhumanity, 
injustice and depravity of the present system. They demand 
in addition to employment, complete industrial emancipation, 

55 



the right and means to live. The struggle for existence 
belongs to the animal kingdom. Man, however, is more 
highly developed than the lower animals. He is entitled to 
look forward to something better and higher, than the 
primitive rudimentary struggle of life in which the brutally 
fittest survive. 

The world's workers, the actual creators of all wealth, 
the producers of all comforts and luxuries, have by their cen- 
turies of productivity, demonstrated their fitness to survive 
in the economic struggle. Labor will inherit the future. 
Capitalism will pass out as have feudalism, nomadism and 
tribal communism (systems that preceded it), taking its 
appointed place upon the shelf of antiquity, among the out- 
worn, archaic social systems, long since outgrown and dis- 
carded by the race in the process of evolution. 

The issue today lies between righteous liberty and in- 
dustrial tyranny. It is a fight for economic freedom and 
justice. Under capitalism, justice is a myth. There can 
be no economic justice as long as we have a capitalist class 
as ruling class and a working class as a ruled class. Justice 
is only possible where economic classes do not exist. 

The time is ripe! Ethiopian fellow workers, join hands 
with your white brothers ! Through industrial solidarity we 
shall conquer the despotic capitalist class and the Church 
hierarchy. 

Today the ruling class have recognized what for years 
they pretended to deny; namely, the dynamic force of 
workers' solidarity. The rise to power of the proletariat 
is inevitable. 

Capitalism, the gnawing sanguinary monster, capitalism 
the cruel and unrelenting enemy of the workers, is on the 
verge of utter collapse. The victory of the workers is sure. 
"The lowly shall inherit the earth." Therefore the duty of 
the working class is to unite, to rise out of servitude and 
claim the world. Then parasitism will be at an end and if 
anyone will not work neither shall he eat. It is the historic 
mission of the proletariat to sweep away capitalism and 
proclaim the Workers' Republic, with justice, liberty and 
equity for all. 



THE END. 



TWO SENSATION 




By the Same Author 

Ku Klux Man, Church and Labor 
Twelve O'Clock Lunch 

KU KLUX KLAN, CHURCH AND LABOR is the 

story of the origin and growth of the Ku Klux Klan. 
What is this powerful organization that is so liberally 
supported by the capitalists and churches? Why is 
it so antagonistic to Labor? In this book its sinister 
purpose is fully laid bare. No man who concerns 
himself about our modern problems can be without 
this book. 

TWELVE O'CLOCK LUNCH tells about what we 
eat at our noon-day meal. When the whistle an- 
nounces lunch time we rush to a nearby restaurant, 
where little care is given to the food set before us. 
Mr. Russo, in his best style, tells us where the food 
came from, how prepared and the discomforts that 
we suffer from its consumption. All persons who are 
concerned about their health should be acquainted 
with this interesting and educational book. 



Add 



ress 



PASQUALE RUSSO 

833 Sedgwick Street 

Chicago, 111. 




011836 968 3 



